Mike Beard and Stuart Allan have operated Raven Maps in Medford since 1987.

But Imus, after nearly 30 years in a solo enterprise, is new to success. Cheerful and painstaking, he was content to sell at most a dozen maps per month. And he never begrudged the years of work, about 6,000 hours, he put into creating his U.S. map.

“I knew from the outset that if people could find out about it and appreciate what I’d done,” says Imus, “it would be my first commercial success of the last three decades.”

More important to him has been to share the joy of geography. “Geography isn’t just this dry academic subject that gets taught in school. It’s a lens through which to observe and understand the world that we live in.”